LOGIN

Testing is where the magic happens

At North Kiteboarding, we have an array of specialists that make up a Team responsible for the creation and evolution of our innovative and high quality products. So when it came to testing this year, we took everyone to Cape Town. Flying in from all over the globe -Maui, Germany, Sri Lanka, Brazil, New Caledonia, UK – the key players met to make a plan of action for the next 10 days of testing.

Cape Town is a great destination for testing thanks to its reliable and variable conditions. Days often start with light winds, ideal for testing the lower end performance of kites, those bigger sizes and efficiency of our boards. In the afternoon the 'tablecloth' can be seen covering the iconic Table Mountain, from where the Cape Doctor delivers the much loved, and strong South Easterly winds. These conditions are exciting yet tough, but ultimately they are optimal. We really need to push our kites and boards to their boundaries, and it is here that we develop them to retain high performance characteristics, even on their limits.

At North Kiteboarding we rely on customer and rider feedback in order to reach our goal of giving every rider what they want. It is because of this value, that we put a lot of emphasis on the design team working intensively with a handful of Team Riders. Sky Solbach (Rider) and Ken Winner (Kite-Designer), and Tom Court (Rider) and Ralf Groesl (Kite-Designer) are perfect examples of how these longstanding relationships and open lines of communication between the duos, have had a huge impact on the products of today.

Sky and Ken focused the wave riding and foil test days, choosing a variety of spots along the coastline to test all aspects of the wave riding products. Meanwhile, Tom and Ralf headed up the freestyle, wakestyle, freeride and big air disciplines, where they were joined by Aaron Hadlow, Tom Hebert, Reno Romeu, Craig Cunningham, and Colleen Carroll, collectively more feedback helps to further refine products.

Other than developing existing products - often one of the biggest challenges as it is hard to improve on already high performing gear – it is motivating to see innovation brought to life. For 2015, the Vegas concept changed, a specific wakestyle bar was brought to market, we introduced Hadlow's 6 line setup with extra trim options, new materials were sourced and implemented into our products and the POP Boot evolved and continued to be successful. Now if I was to tell you that these products were tested, tuned, tweaked and finalised in Cape Town last year, can you imagine how excited we are for next years gear!?

It's hard to not go into too much detail as I don't want to spoil the surprise for you, but for those 10 days of testing it was inspiring to see visionaries, great minds and talented riders come together, to pour knowledge and passion into the same thing; now that really is True Kiteboarding.

Post a review to enter the draw to win a brand new Rebel 8!

The new Rebel – the designers point of view, By Ken Winner

The Rebel remains a 5-line kite, of course, all for all the usual reasons:

First of all for a short depower stroke and a crisp feel. Anyone who rides waves or has short arms or just likes a responsive kite can appreciate the importance of achieving full depower with a minimal movement of the control bar.

Second, the super stability. If it weren't so easy to keep it in the air, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's made of rock.

Third, easy relaunch in light winds. Even riders who like four-line kites often add a fifth line to make relaunch possible in super-light wind.

Fourth, safety. When you need to get total, complete and perfect depower in half a second, nothing else works as well as a 5th line.

Last but not least, the easy self-landing – for people who don’t want to always depend on someone on the beach catching their kite. Not the safest way to do it, but possible.

Changes in detail:

Sizes 10 to 14 have been tuned for a very short bar stroke and a maximally crisp feel.

Sizes 6 to 8, which naturally tend to be a bit too crisp and responsive, have been tuned for a crispness and responsiveness that's just right. Not soft and slow; not uncomfortably harsh and fast.

9-meter kites can go either way, a bit slow and soft or a bit fast and harsh. We spent some time tuning this one for what we think is just the right feel in a versatile high performance freestyle kite.

Attention! Rebels work best when inflated to at least 6psi. They lose some performance at lower inflation pressures, but will still fly pretty well. By contrast, many kites on the market these days need 8 or 10 psi to fly correctly.

Aspects of the Rebel's overall geometry have not changed. There are still five struts, with the center strut being a floating strut for momentary depower and luffability. Segmentation is much the same from tip strut to tip strut.

Multiple segments through the center of the canopy give good profile fidelity, while one straight segment on each side gives a flat profile where it can do the most good in resisting unwanted luffing and flutter. Five struts give needed structure while allowing for good performance at low inflation pressures.

We kept the overall leading edge diameters fairly large right out through the tips to ensure rock-solid stability and tolerance of low inflation pressures.

The Rebel is a high performance freeride kite, so there's no need to try to minimize diameters at the expense of convenience, stability and easy relaunch. A profile of moderate depth gives Rebels excellent low-end power.

We’ve tuned the bar pressure for the solid feel and reassuring feedback that Rebel riders expect.

The moderately deep and moderately draft-forward profile gives the 2015 Rebel positive upstroke and smooth transit through the center of the wind window.

We have kept our more streamlined, semi-segmented struts from previous years. This gives us low weight and good flexibility.

The Rebel is a mature design with thousands of fans. No rider who likes the Rebel wants to see it change much, so our goal with the Rebel these days is to fine-tune details and ensure that each size works the best it can, for the type of riding it’s best suited to.

Aside from free weights and wakeboarding boats, low weight is almost universally desired in sports products. For 2015 we've pared weight from the Rebel without reducing durability in any way.

Our wavy force spread canopy construction has been refined to involve less cloth and weight than in past years, and it has been extended to the tips. This gives good mitigation of flutter and flexing between the dissimilar materials -- hence better durability -- from kite tip to kite tip.

As always in kite design, you want to have the right shape stability and the right shape flexibility in all the right places. Keeping with that imperative, we went more flexible by slimming and tapering the struts a few years ago. Continuing the trend for 2015, we´ve gone even a little more flexible in the Rebel by removing the Cam Battens.

The trailing edge tension of the Rebel has been refined to reduce the potential for wrinkles and flutter while keeping the correct cone and cupping.

Overall, the Rebel stays a Rebel, still you´ll be surprised and impressed while testing it through al the sizes!

"The process" Episode

Inside Information Rebel 2014 - What's really new?

STRUT CONSTRUCTION 3D
The Struts have been refined with a semi-segmented construction. The segments allow the struts to mimic the shape of the profile, which helps to avoid stress points. The design is very lightweight but also precise, which increases the structural rigidity.

NEW PANEL LAYOUT “FORCE CONTROL”
Compared to 2013, the layer of wave-shaped cloth situated at the boundary between the durable 50-gram D2 Ripstop Canopy and the super tough 160-gram trailing edge dacron is put higher and wider to eliminate stress points between the two materials. This change in construction leads to a better mitigation of flutter and flexing between the dissimilar materials.

DEEPER PROFILE
In 2014, the Rebel has a slightly deeper and more draft forward profile, which gives the kite a more positive upstroke and smoother transit through the centre of the wind window.

SIZE SPECIFIC TUNING:
The Rebel has been a competitive kite in racing with super lowend and excellent upwind ability. Besides, within the North Kiteboarding line up the Rebel has the best windrange together with the Dyno. Today you could virtually say the Rebel is developing into two different directions.

ONE KITE/TWO PERSPECTIVES

RIDER PERSPECTIVE Sky Solbach
The Rebel 2014 in smaller sizes, talking about size 10 to 5, is my favourite kite when I go wave riding. Mentioning below just some of its performance properties which are essential for waveriding:

— Enormous depower ability

— Smooth turning

— A lot of power, which is especially interesting

for heavier kiters

— Stable and solid feel

— Good drift (the kite does not fly as quickly to

the edge of the wind window which permits to more readily drift downwind) Summarizing, due to the diverse characteristics the new rebel can be described as a High performance Freeride/Wave kite.